It’s time for Latinos to put on their boxing gloves and get ready to fight: It’s redistricting time and the stakes for our political clout have never been higher —say Latino leaders.

“Because of the size of the Latino population, this redistricting will determine the political destiny of Latinos for the next 10 years,” says Rosalind Gold, senior director of policy, research and advocacy for the National Association of Latino Elected Officials. “We need to make sure that our growth in population translates into political opportunities.”

After posting a few articles on Latina.com about how important it is for everyone, especially Latinos, to fill out the US Census, I began to notice a trend. Everyone agrees about the importance of standing up to be counted—after all, the census is the way our government determines how direly necessary federal funds are allocated to schools and hospitals and how congressional districts are shaped. But a healthy debate was brewing about how we Latinos were choosing to fill out the race section of the census.

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